Beach plastic archaeology: ‘vintage’ objects without an expiration date (but with a return date)

The commercial boom of pop and vintage design can lead someone to feel nostalgia for some elements of the past. A bottle of Vernel, another of Delial, Yoplait yogurts, or the first Matutano ham-flavored chips. Faced with this reality, the nostalgic citizen can turn to collector websites to find these objects or — unfortunately — take a walk along the Spanish coasts. With a bit of luck, they might find designs from decades ago buried in the sand after being returned by the sea.

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Patricia Reina and Fernando Gómez, the people responsible for the initiative Living without plastic, which has already surpassed a decade of existence, did exactly that. For months they traveled the entire Spanish coast and found the mentioned objects, and many more. They called it beach archaeology and noted the temporal origin of what was found and the date of the discovery.

In some cases, the packaging date of those products showed that up to 50 years had passed since the plastic container that was thrown into the sea was returned to land by the waters. And in an almost perfect state of preservation, which is doubly concerning. The plastic had not degraded, but it had released enough microplastics and nanoplastics to contaminate the waters, the food chain, and ourselves.

Gómez, one half of Living without plastic, explains that “any plastic, if it ends up lost in nature, will eventually become microplastic. It will take five, ten years, but over time it ends up breaking down.” That means the chemical composition of the material does not change, but its size reduces until it is no longer visible to the human eye. “Those are already nanoplastics, and they are everywhere: in Antarctica, in marine trenches, in the deepest ocean trenches…”.

“And that’s how they enter the food chain,” explains now Reina, the other half of Living without plastic. But not only there, she adds. The problem is no longer that the fish ingests the microplastic and transfers it to humans. “Nanoplastics are in the air: we breathe them.” If you eat or breathe a plastic particle so small “it can cross the intestinal membrane, enter the bloodstream, and cause damage to the body.” Studies published in Nature or Pubmed have documented the presence of nanoplastics in human brains and cerebrospinal fluid. Despite advances, science still does not know the effect that the presence of these microelements has on human health.

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The beach archaeology of Reina and Gómez demonstrates two things and demands a third. First, it shows the recklessness with which many plastic objects produced in the past were treated. Second, it is the durability of these objects and their danger once the material they release lodges in the human body. And what it demands is greater responsibility, from now on, when dealing with plastic. Responsibility that is personal and, Reina emphasizes, legal.

<p“Right now we are part of a platform called Waste Law Now — Reina elaborates — that demands the application of the legal text.” Because although the law was approved in 2022, its development is not complete, so it is a blunt paper. The Waste Law requires regulations that are still under consultation or adapting to prior requirements. Precisely on August 12, one of the pending regulations came into force, which prohibits the use of plastics in the packaging of fruits and vegetables in formats smaller than one and a half kilos.

Gómez nods, and when asked if it is really possible to live without disposable plastic, he answers confidently: “It is possible. Almost 99%, I would say. The thing is, as a citizen, as a consumer, you have to put in a lot of effort.”